Pickard County Atlas

by Chris Harding Thornton

  Harley watched him. Glenn looked grayish. Gray pallor was heart. It wasn’t good. “You knew this morning?”

  He nodded.

  There was something more to Glenn’s look than being crestfallen over the general state of the world. Something other than his usual bleeding-heart sympathy. Snatches of the past few days’ conversations littered the air between them. Each was like a pinprick of light in a constellation waiting to be drawn. When Harley said he’d seen Paul at the home place, Glenn said to tread light. When Harley’d eyed the locust trees in the rearview at the Christiansens’, when he’d found the DeKalb hat, Glenn said don’t jump straight to Reddick. He never specified which. Glenn’s reaction to the quaaludes earlier today—the script was Virginia’s, he’d said. And now the Plymouth. Glenn hadn’t been doing any weird wishful thinking. Glenn had gone straight for some much weirder worst-case scenario.

  “You think she’s the one. Virginia.”

  Glenn didn’t look at him. Just nodded.

  “Paul lives with her, you know. Has access to her car.” Harley remembered the F-250 was nowhere along Main that night at the Avark. In the morning, when Paul called Pam, he’d said it was in Wilton. It could’ve been. But the old Plymouth was in Knudsen’s barn. And that barn wasn’t but a mile walk from the Avark. “Don’t it seem more likely? Paul?”

  “Think that’d be better?” Glenn said. “That boy’s all she’s got.”

  More glimmers pierced the air. Glenn flushing those first quaaludes. Glenn being touchy every time Harley pulled Paul over. Glenn wanting to brush off the water tower deal as drunken teenage antics.

  Glenn didn’t take his eyes off a faraway spot across the room. “Just left her there that night. Burning trash naked. Moved the barrel so she could go on ahead.”

  Harley wondered about Glenn’s pallor. If he should call Wilton for the paramedics.

  Glenn kept talking. “I let her be so she could go on down that dark hole she was digging. I just made sure she did it out of everybody’s sight.”

  A heat surged beneath Harley’s skin. “All right. So if it is Virginia, which it’s not, what do you think? Think if you took the barrel, threw it in your trunk, and drove away, it would’ve changed everything? Think a night in the drunk tank would’ve snapped her right out of it?” He reached for the foil in his pocket. He wouldn’t smoke one now. Not with Glenn’s grayness. “Wouldn’t,” Harley said sharply. “Likely wouldn’t have made one iota difference.”

  Glenn looked at Harley then, eyes rheumy like June Christiansen’s had been. “You believe that.” Harley didn’t know if it’d been a question or a statement. Glenn looked away again.

  “People do what they do,” Harley said. “They do what they do for a whole lifetime of reasons. Not any one thing.”

  “That’s all a lifetime is. Whole lot of one things.” Glenn’s chair scooted against the linoleum tile and his keys jangled. He’d pulled them from where they hooked to his belt. “Change one thing, might change the whole course.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t know. You can’t know, and you can’t live your whole life wondering if you’d done one thing more or less, some one tiny thing, everything else would’ve spun out differently. True or not. You can’t go through a life like that.” Harley took a steadying breath. “You said yourself we did all we could.” Glenn was crossing the room toward the door. “Listen. I’ll go by there. Do a welfare check.”

  “Already did. No sign of her or the car.”

  “Then I’ll keep looking.”

  Glenn nodded before he pulled the door open and walked out on the landing. The daylight was softening. Air filtered in, cooler than it had been. “That poor goddamn woman.”

  “Glenn.”

  “Yeah. I’ll see ya.” He pulled the door shut behind him.

  Harley filled the pot and went to the coffee maker. While it brewed, he absently traced the section lines on a Pickard County plat map framed above it. The map was old, from the 1936 atlas, useless and framed for posterity. Ziske’s name hovered above Lucas’s and below Jipp’s, which was catty-corner to Knudsen’s. I bet you steer clear of all them houses right around the old Lucas place, Paul had said. Harley read the squares of names westward, right to left, as they rose and fell along the abandoned railroad tracks. Knudsen. Jipp. Ziske. Lucas. Jensen.

  The only one still there was Ziske, whose property was separated from the Knudsen place by the county oil. The old man couldn’t see or hear worth a damn, but he was still alive. It was something. It was worth checking.

  If Ziske was surprised to be on the receiving end of a phone call from the sheriff’s department, he didn’t sound it. Harley warned he couldn’t talk long. “You seen or heard anything out of the ordinary? Since I was out there?”

  “I don’t know what counts as ordinary and what don’t no more. That son of a bitch Logemann finished mowing the Jipp place down yesterday. Sitting in piles all over the place. Bet he’ll pick the windiest day of the month to burn off what’s left, take us all out. Still say he’s the one that burnt that old house, like it weren’t no more than clearing trees.”

  Harley tried to picture the Jipp place gone completely. The property lines you could see in an aerial picture looking like faded scars, fully erased. Harley didn’t like Logemann eating up everything only to lose it, either. But for now it was his, and if he wanted to make a living off it, he needed more space to keep up. Nobody could fault him for that. Fault Henry Ford. Fault the commodities market. “Logemann didn’t burn down the Jipp place,” Harley said. “Have you seen anything? Heard anything?”

  “Seen that drunk son of a bitch sneaking along my fence line middle of the night, naked.”

  A sweeping, like a weak electric current, passed over Harley’s skin. He pictured Paul Reddick hanging from the catwalk, lit up in the water tower flood lamps. He saw Virginia glowing in the flames of the burn barrel. “Wasn’t Logemann.” Harley wished to hell it was. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t know who else’d be up along the property line. And he’s a drunk. Assume drunk accounts for the nakedness. That or he got my gas all over his clothes—drained my damn gas tank—Betty tried filling up when she left twenty minutes ago, tank was bone-dry. Son of a bitch wants to burn me in my sleep with my own gas. Even took the two-gallon can from the garage.”

  The stolen gas can reports. Harley told Ziske to slow the hell down. Harley needed the old man to slow the hell down and say what he saw. In order.

  Ziske gave a huff of a breath. Rankled, he started again, voice full of angry composure. “First some car passed on the Schleswig-Holstein. Woke me up. Laid there I don’t know how long. Finally went to take a tinkle, if you don’t mind, and up towards the Old German, I seen something white. Moving. Couldn’t tell what the hell it was. Thought my time was up, want the truth.” He cut himself off and barked, “Don’t give me any garbage. You see something all white, moving up by the Old German where half your people are planted, you think things. But then I saw it walk, not—Hell,” he said, frustrated. “Hell if I know what goblins do, but I don’t bet gravel troubles their feet, and this one was having a hell of a time. So I grabbed the Chuckster by the barrel and went on the porch—”

  “Christ, Ziske—you can’t—”

  “Goddamn twenty-two,” he barked back. “Peashooter. Thing wouldn’t stun a ground squirrel. Took it out there for the noise, get him back on his property. And I didn’t shoot it, did I?”

  “You ain’t said.”

  “Well, I didn’t. I stood there and watched whoever it was—now you’re telling me it wasn’t Logemann, so I guess some naked gypsy-hobo—cranking my water pump.”

  “What?”

  “My damn water pump, I said. Up by the road. Need it if the power goes out. Power goes out, you know, I got no water. There’s progress. Hook it all up to a fuse that can blow—”

  “Then what?”

  “Then? Took a drink, looked like. Turned around and walked. Direction of Logemann’s a
nd your folks’. Right along the Schleswig-Holstein. That back property line.”

  Carol squawked from the radio across the room.

  “What time was it?” Harley had left Pam alone there, at the home place. But this morning he’d seen her car. He’d seen she’d gotten home all right.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Late, early. Still dark.”

  Carol squawked again.

  “Stay indoors. I’ll head over, have a look around.”

  “Fair warning, I find out whoever stole that gas’s been stealing my paper—some naked gypsy-hobo-ghost—I’ll get out the goddamn twelve-gauge.”

  Ziske’s paper. The balled-up remnants of newsprint. Doris Luschen’s obituary in the supplement, telling everybody who read it exactly when nobody would be at the house. Jack Christiansen’s death notice had run in Tuesday’s paper. Later that night, Wednesday morning, was the Jipp fire. Granted, the Post-Gazettes could’ve come from anywhere. But Ziske’s proximity to the Jipp and Knudsen places made his mailbox awful convenient.

  “Did the supplement show?”

  “No, and of course that goddamn Gene—”

  Carol squawked.

  “You hear that?” Ziske demanded. “What the hell’s that racket?”

  “I gotta go. I’ll check it out.” Harley hung up.

  By the time he got to the radio and said go ahead, Carol was irate. Babe Reinhardt had called. She wouldn’t say why. She’d asked who was on duty, and when Carol told her Harley, Babe said get his ass over to their place now.

  He sprinted down the stairs to the cruiser. He needed to get out to the old Schleswig-Holstein road. He needed to get there while there was still some light, which was sinking. Babe’s call had priority. But he’d make it fast and hope whatever the hell she wanted had nothing to do with what he feared it did. He couldn’t see how it would. Not unless Pam went and told the woman herself.

  He sped that way with a twist in his gut. Harley didn’t know if the breed of women Babe Reinhardt belonged to were everywhere. He didn’t know everywhere. But they were as native to Pickard County and the surrounding hills and valleys as leadplant. If they didn’t know you, you were suspect, and if they did, they were very slow to warm. The coldness wasn’t caution, since caution meant fear, and women like Babe had no fear. What they had was the unshakable conviction you were about to prove their worst expectations right. They sized you up and waited for your follow-through. And Harley was fairly sure he’d followed through.

  He wasn’t eager pulling in the gravel drive, and he was less eager when he saw Red’s pickup wasn’t there. Harley needed to get in, get out.

  She was on the front porch when he pulled up. He left the engine running, the door wide open. He avoided her sharp watch as he walked to the base of the steps.

  “Harley,” she said.

  He felt like a field mouse in a hawk’s sights, and there was no time for pleasantries. “Heard you called. Carol didn’t say why.”

  “She don’t need to know. She’s got enough dirt on everybody as it is, back from listening in on the party line.” Carol was switchboard operator before coming on as a dispatcher. “Besides, it’s probably nothing,” she said.

  “Doubt you’d call about nothing.”

  She took a loud, hard breath through her nose and said, “It’s our youngest. Pam.”

  He toed a shard of limestone gravel. He held his hips with the webs of his hands and glanced at the windbreak. He wanted a cigarette.

  “She called earlier. Something wasn’t right. Then she was supposed to come by hours ago and didn’t. She won’t answer the phone, so I drove over. Her car’s outside and the front door’s locked. She never locks it. Still thinks she lives out here.”

  A dark, unformed thought shot through him. But he’d seen the Nova. He’d seen she’d gotten home safe. He’d told himself she had. “I’ll check it out.” He turned back toward the Fury’s open door.

  “There’s more.” The words were laced with a reedy warning tone. “She asked for money. Fifty dollars.”

  Harley didn’t know how to take it. “What do you make of it?”

  “She’s got some pride. She doesn’t ask for money.”

  “Could be all it is,” he said. “She felt bad asking, now she’s avoiding you. I’ll go by there, check it out.”

  She rushed the words that came next like she was irritated having to say them. “Helen Nelson says Pam left her girl in the upstairs of Gordon’s. A few days ago. Tried to drive off.” She added just as quick, “Before you go jumping guns—it’s Helen Nelson. Went in once for a pot lid, she kept me there an hour. Seen some show about cults. Convinced everybody was a Moonie.”

  “What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” Babe’s voice bored in, direct. “I think Pam’s rash.” She stopped, and when she started again, she was more tentative. The sound of Babe being tentative unnerved him more than the boring in. “I need to ask you something that doesn’t go past this porch.” She waited for his acknowledgment, his agreement to terms.

  “All right,” he said.

  “If Pam thought she was in a tight enough spot, there’s no telling what she’d do. I like to think she wouldn’t hurt that girl. Lord knows she’s too squeamish to bleed a chicken. Herself, I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I don’t know what to watch for. When it comes to that.”

  Harley studied Babe. He wasn’t looking for whether or not she knew anything about him and Pam. He was looking for confirmation of what was implied. That Babe thought he’d have some kind of insight. Know some telltale signs a person was about to eat a load of buckshot.

  In truth, he’d gauged every single person he’d met over the last forty years for that inclination. And every once in a while he thought he saw it. That someone was the type to end it. He thought he saw it on Paul that night at the water tower. But you looked hard enough, long enough, you saw there wasn’t one type. There wasn’t any connection between one person doing it and another. Every time was different. Each and every time. In the end, for all the gauging and watching, Harley didn’t know what to look for any better than Babe did. In the end, all Harley knew was it was a thing a person could do.

  She watched him, waiting. Her eyes were as earnest, as free of judgment as he’d ever seen them or suspected he’d ever see them again. Not unless he was the one to take the call, the one who’d one day find her at the base of a cellar’s steps. The look cramped in his throat. He hated to do it, but he shook his head.

  “No,” she said, almost too quiet to hear. “No, didn’t figure. Guess it’s the sort of thing where signs pop up after. Trick of hindsight.”

  “Seems that way,” he said. “Lot of times.”

  She gripped the pillar of the porch like she was holding it upright. She rubbed the wood with her thumb.

  “I’ll head over now.” He walked back to the open cruiser door. “Let you know what’s going on soon as I can.”

  “Harley,” she said. Her eyes stayed on him, still searching but no longer earnest. They were guarded. Scrutinizing. “You know where to go, then?”

  He looked up at her. Blank, he hoped. “Figured I’d radio Carol. Get the address.”

  She gave a quick, sharp nod. “Just see they’re all right.” She kept her eyes on him, face setting in a hardened sag. She dropped her hold on the porch pillar, crossed her arms against her chest, and watched him as he left.

  He smoked and bottomed the needle on the Fury. Whatever Pam might’ve done, or might’ve been doing, he’d been a party to it. He thought of Glenn’s grayness. That burn barrel. One thing Harley had always been good for was not being a party to much. That’d been why his marriage fell apart. He hadn’t been a party to it.

  Out at Park Meadows, her Nova sat in what should’ve been a yard. After his first knock, he felt the knob. Locked, like Babe said. In what light was left of the day, he walked the perimeter of brush and dirt. He passed a spare, half-buried cinder block and a cut-up garden hose. He saw nothing through the wind
ows. They were set too high to see anything besides drapes. He rounded the side and walked up the mesh steps again. They were the same as the ones at the sheriff’s office portable. He supposed that was all a trailer was, a portable. He thought of Dell Senior, bloodshot and smiling those squared-off white teeth, selling what amounted to slipshod shipping containers with windows. Telling people the things were practically houses. Houses they’d have to pay to move or leave behind if the lot rent spiked or the land ever sold out from under them.

  He knocked again, harder, and called out her name. After he said it, he knew his tone sounded too familiar. Thankfully, none of the neighbors had come outside when the cruiser pulled up. Most were probably scrambling for some nook to stash their pot in.

  When he called out again, he said he was Harley Jensen, sheriff’s deputy. The formality brought a blush of warmth to his skin. He pictured her white hips rising from the floorboards. He tried to hold the image there without it lapsing, without seeing the bottom of a cane-seat chair or gray dirt on the soles of stilled feet. But even as he saw Pam naked and willowy, he felt the night-blue glow of the kitchen at his back. He pounded the wood hard with the side of his fist. He told her he needed her to answer.

  Silence. Pretty sure we’re all headed for worse, she’d said last night.

  He pounded again. A V of slim wood splintered in the flimsy veneer of the door. It pierced the meat of his pinkie. He kept pounding. Told her if she didn’t answer, he was coming in.

  Then the pat of footsteps pulsed the porch beneath his boots. A tension running up from his shoulders to his clenched teeth gave.

  She opened the door enough to fit the width of her head. She stared out at him, lips parted in what he supposed was justified shock at him standing on the landing, wrecking her door.

  “Is he here?” He said it as low as he could muster while he caught his breath.

  She shook her head and blinked, like she was blinking away a daze. He didn’t know if he believed her. He thought he’d seen that look once, when Darlene Wulf called about her drunk, no-account prick of a husband. Darlene had signaled. She’d pointed with a twitch. She’d darted her eyes to say the man was right next to her. Harley had waited till her grip relaxed, so she hardly touched the wood. Then he’d kicked the door and knocked the man senseless. Harley watched for any sign now from Pam. For any twitch. Any dart of the eyes.